Writing Effective Headlines

A headline is the first impression that your advertisements are going to make. The headline is the first thing a person is going to read on your advertising, and the headline is going to be what helps them decide whether they intend to keep reading. In order to make your headlines as effective as possible you need to be certain that they accomplish all of the things a good headline needs to.

While headlines are an important part of any kind of advertising, I’ll use postcard printing to frame my points, because custom postcards need to act faster than many other advertisements, and the headline is often a larger part of the postcard than it will be with most advertising.

What does your headline needs to do? The first thing is grab the person’s attention. You need to be able to write a headline that gets their interest and encourages them to keep reading. The best headlines are often going to be ones that connect to a person’s life in some way. You’re talking about something they’ll already have interest in, which will encourage them to want to read more.

Beyond the topic of the headline you have to also phrase it in a way to get the person thinking. Questions are great to use with your headlines because questions encourage people to start thinking about the answer.

This leads to the next function of the headline. They’re not just grabbing a person’s attention but they’re also setting up what the follow postcard is going to be about, which means the headline needs to heavily connect with the rest of the material.

Postcards are only going to have a single core message because they aren’t long enough to have much else, and your headline needs to cover what that message is so people are going to be interested right from the beginning.

The rest of your postcard is going to cover the various details that the headline first mentions, but the headline will still be the first thing that lets a person know what they’re going to be reading about. How thoroughly your headline covers the subject is going to vary depending on what your goal is.

Some headlines essentially cover the entire topic, and the rest of the postcard adds a few additional details. Advertising for a sale will result in something like this. The headline mentions what the sale is, which is the most important thing. Headlines that are questions will merely set up the topic, while the rest of the postcard covers the bulk of the remaining details. The headline itself won’t give people as much information.

Whether using postcard printing or putting up posters, along with any other kind of advertisements, you have to be certain that your headlines are grabbing the eye and introducing your marketing.